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Accommodation outside of Florence required

Hi All,

Wife and I are riding bikes to Tuscany this coming end of September to mid October and are looking for a good agriturismo type accommodation outside of main hustle and bustle of Florence. Preferably, we would like it to be in the middle of small village with a train or a bus link to the city.

Can anybody recommend a place to stay, perhaps some of you own a place and willing to let for a week to a fellow GSer?

While on the subject of travel, would you take a train/ferry crossing to northern France, ride 3-4 days to Tuscany stay a week in Tuscany and ride 3-4 days back, or would you take a ferry from Portsmouth to Santander , ride 2 days through Pyrenees, South of France and into Italy stay a week and do same return journey to Santander?
Return ferry cost (Portsmouth-Santander-Portsmouth) at the moment is circa £700 for two bikes and a cabin each way.

We usually stay up in the Hills, to the east of Firenze, at Fiesole. Plenty of Hotels & AT around, just try booking.com - for instance Hotel Villa Dei Bosconi. Close to the Bus that takes you into the Centre. Buy tickets in advance at the Tabac or in your Hotel. Fiesole keeps you away from the chaos, if it's quiet/relaxing that you seek.

Travel - all down to the time/cost calculation. We prefer the ride, but the time poor take the ferry or ship the bikes to Geneva/Italy & fly in. Your choice. Weather has started to break up by the dates you mention. Early September would be better IMHO.

Last year we rented a villa in the beautiful little town of Monte San Savino which also has a number of delightful hotels and took the train into Firenze from nearby Arezzo which proved both cheap and easy plus the terminal in Firenze (San Maria Novella) is just a 5 minute walk to all the main tourist attractions.
The auto ticket machines are so easy to use.
One thing to remember is if travelling by any public transport in Italy you MUST get your ticket validated. You will find validating stamp machines on all station platforms.

We, ( the strange one and myself ) took the bike over Newcastle - Ijmuiden, perfectly good overnight ferry. Pre booked stops overnight via booking .com and recommendations from similar bike minded bods. Went down through Germany, Switzerland.
Stayed in an Air BnB between Florence and Lucca for five nights and toured about a bit.
Great quirky house with pool. Took the bike into Lucca, the walled city, found it better than Florence.Good motorbike parking facility just outside the front gate.
Then on the way back, just blagged accommodation previous night through booking .com. Found good last minute deals on digs and erm, just went there. Up west through France , Belgium etc.
Went back via Newcastle which suited us.
Great trip, was going to do similar last year but wife did something to her hip --- couldn't get her leg over

Fiesole keeps you away from the chaos, if it's quiet/relaxing that you seek.

Travel - all down to the time/cost calculation. We prefer the ride, but the time poor take the ferry or ship the bikes to Geneva/Italy & fly in. Your choice. Weather has started to break up by the dates you mention. Early September would be better IMHO.

Yes very much our kind of holiday destination.(Will check that location). We rather have a great riding road on our doorstep over the City/Town centre. We will likely take two maybe three train journeys into various Towns and Cities during our 9 day stay in Tuscany. Rest of the time we will take day trips riding mountain roads or just simply relax at base.

Looked at the cost/time having to travel, we will likely take the tunnels crossing on the way there (we are based in South Herts) via Black Forest, Switzerland, Past lake Garda, towards Bologna etc. On the way we will likely to take coastal route toward Spain and onto Santander/Bilbao and back into Portsmouth. Reason being that Mid October in northern France will likely be very grey, wet and generally unpleasant.

Unfortunately, wife could only get two weeks of holiday only at the end of September going into early October. In any case weather will be still better there than it is here in the UK.

We, ( the strange one and myself ) took the bike over Newcastle - Ijmuiden, perfectly good overnight ferry. Pre booked stops overnight via booking .com and recommendations from similar bike minded bods. Went down through Germany, Switzerland.
Stayed in an Air BnB between Florence and Lucca for five nights and toured about a bit.
Great quirky house with pool. Took the bike into Lucca, the walled city, found it better than Florence.Good motorbike parking facility just outside the front gate.
Then on the way back, just blagged accommodation previous night through booking .com. Found good last minute deals on digs and erm, just went there. Up west through France , Belgium etc.
Went back via Newcastle which suited us.
Great trip, was going to do similar last year but wife did something to her hip --- couldn't get her leg over

Hope this helps.

We are in South Herts so will likely to cross over into Northern France or Northern Spain.
Lucca Sound very interesting and certainly be up my wife's street.
We are looking to take 4 days each way to get there and back home so will be doing similar thing in regards to Booking.com etc. But would rather stay in a family run B&B, knowing that hospitality be much better than that of F1 hotel we stayed at last year.

Last year we rented a villa in the beautiful little town of Monte San Savino which also has a number of delightful hotels and took the train into Firenze from nearby Arezzo which proved both cheap and easy plus the terminal in Firenze (San Maria Novella) is just a 5 minute walk to all the main tourist attractions.
The auto ticket machines are so easy to use.
One thing to remember is if travelling by any public transport in Italy you MUST get your ticket validated. You will find validating stamp machines on all station platforms.

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